No one really likes to feel like they’re being scolded. If people aren’t eating as well as they should and are devoting too much time to sedentary activities (watching television, for example), they probably aren’t going to plop down on the sofa in front of the Food Network for a reminder, are they?

Healthier cooking doesn’t have an illustrious history in food television. I think executives feel a certain responsibility to provide programming that promotes it, but it’s hard to find the right balance of educational and entertaining, without sending the associated message that network darling Paula Deen is trying to kill you every time she empties a jar of mayo to make a salad.

Past attempts have fallen into some readily identifiable categories. I remember some PBS cooking shows that fell very much into the scolding category, with hosts who pretended they were speaking to a like-minded audience while sending coded disapproval to the people who were actually watching them simply because the show came on after Julia and Jacques and they were too lazy to change the channel.

Then there was a brief wave of shows on the Food Network featuring fad chefs. Low Carb and Loving It tried to capitalize on the Atkins wave without success, coming just as the Atkins backlash was gathering momentum. Calorie Commando had the production values and vibe of an infomercial and focused too much on the mathematics of nutrition; if people aren’t interested in fresh vegetables and exercise, you certainly won’t sway them by adding a lesson in caloric algebra to the equation.

So what about Ellie Krieger, host of Healthy Appetite? Does this registered dietitian avoid the pitfalls that seem endemic to the category? And does it matter?

Pros:

Cons:

Summary:

Free of diet-fad gimmickry and schoolmarm severity, Krieger seems to have found the best approach yet to presenting healthy cooking on television – combine nutritionally packed ingredients in flavorful ways and portion them out reasonably. But she’s book-ended by chefs who are unfettered by anything resembling nutritional conscience who can provide the escapism factor that’s an essential ingredient of this kind of programming. I hope she succeeds, because she’s miles better than any of her predecessors, but I remain unconvinced that she can stake out territory on a landscape slathered with room-temperature butter.

The success of Bravo’s Project Runway was bound to trigger attempts at imitation, so it wasn’t surprising that the Food Network put together its own creativity competition, The Next Food Network Star. It wasn’t especially riveting, as you can’t exactly cast your lens on inter-contestant bitchery when you’re hoping to slide them into the void that will be left after Rachael Ray’s inevitable nervous collapse.

As a result, The Next Food Network Star was pretty boring, certainly in comparison to Runway clone Top Chef. (Unfortunately, the second season of Top Chef has focused almost exclusively on inter-contestant bitchery at the expense of anyone actually cooking.) But the first season did at least introduce the Hearty Boys, Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh, who now host Party Line.

I’d be lying if I said that the fact that they’re a gay couple didn’t have anything to do with my happiness with their success in the competition. And I do think they won it on merit. They showed the fastest learning curve of any of the contestants and had an appealing on-camera dynamic.

But Food Network stardom is fickle. Why the network even bothers with a competition is beyond me, since they’re introducing new hosts all the time as it is. It would be going too far to suggest that the path to fame is littered with the corpses of past next Food Network stars, but the network doesn’t seem to be too inclined to hand-holding or patience. If you catch on, you’ll be plastered all over the place. If not, well, here’s the number for your local PBS affiliate.

There are encouraging signs for McDonagh and Smith. They’re in their second season, and production values have improved markedly since the first. (Their original set was only a few rungs up from that cheap kitchenette where poor David Rosengarten didn’t even have a functioning sink during the early years.) And the guys are fun.

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Summary:

They’re fun to watch and have the potential to carve out an interesting niche in the Food Network line-up, but they probably can’t rely on the network to help them too much.

I thought it would be easy to evaluate the cheflebrity of Sandra Lee, of Semi-Homemade fame. Her approach and aesthetic make her the anti-Martha, and for everyone who rolls their eyes at Stewart’s parchment-paper lined rigidity, there are plenty who will view Lee’s unnatural acts with envelopes of powdered ranch dressing mix with equal disdain. (Seriously, I think most people who cook regularly rest somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.)

So why is it that I’m suddenly feeling reluctant to dole out too much mockery on a person who has actually taken a store-bought apple pie, crumbled it into packaged whipped topping, and layered it between strips of baked phyllo? What’s not to mock about that?

For one thing, it isn’t like Lee has invented the “pimp my can” style of cookery. While James Beard and Julia Child were popularizing gourmet techniques, Poppy Cannon was dousing dubious ingredients with liqueurs and setting them ablaze in an attempt to make them more festive and glamorous. (High standards and derision for “home economists” aside, Beard himself shilled for Green Giant.)

And while episodes of her television show can inspire Mystery Science Theatre-esque home viewing, there isn’t a whisper of cynicism to Lee’s presentation.

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Summary:

A lot of Food Network’s programming focuses, if not actually on a gourmet standard of cookery, then at least on higher-end preparations and ingredients. Not everyone wants to work that hard or spend that much, and given the popularity of Lee’s lifestyle products, a lot of people buy into her approach wholeheartedly. So while I personally would probably never try and replicate one of her recipes at home and I watch her program with horrified amusement, I think it’s great that not everyone has to have a pot of fresh rosemary on their kitchen windowsill to play along. She believes in what she’s doing. It’s not for me to wonder how.

Michael Chiarello is one of those Food Network celebrities who seems not to have quite taken off. He has one program, Easy Entertaining, and doesn’t seem as entwined in the Food Network subculture as others. He’s not a utility celebrity like Tyler Florence, and he seems largely immune to the star-factory quality that has overwhelmed some otherwise innocuous tele-chefs who suffer through the overexposure.

This might be because he’s occupied elsewhere and is perfectly content with his current level of activity and exposure. It could also be because he doesn’t quite click with viewers. I can buy either explanation, though I do like his menus a lot.

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Summary:

As a cook, I like his approach and his flavors. As a television personality, I find him a little off-putting. I might have to give a closer look at his cookbooks to see if I can get the information and recipes without the smarm.

Ina Garten is an odd sort of food celebrity. Her on-camera career began with some very endearing guest appearances on Martha Stewart Living. During these visits, Garten came off as funny, easygoing, and enthusiastic. (Of course, just about anyone standing next to pre-incarceration Stewart would seem comparatively ebullient.) I’m guessing that many people, myself included, watched Garten liven things up and said, “She should have her own show.”

Now she does. It’s called Barefoot Contessa after the Hamptons specialty food store she used to own. And I don’t like it very much.

Garten is much better as a foil for another personality than standing alone in front of a camera. She’s better now than she was in the early days of her show, when her unease was just palpable, but she still doesn’t seem to have fully mastered the art of treating a camera as a conversational partner. She’s more fun when people stop by to kibitz.

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Summary:

Maybe Garten shouldn’t have her own show. I think a “Cooking with Ina” program would take better advantage of her on-camera strengths, and that a roster of guest chefs might help widen the scope of her fairly routine menus. And one of them is bound to tell her to use a damned butter knife when measuring cake flour.

In addition to comics, one of my pop-culture obsessions is cooking programming, good and bad. The Food Network pulls out all the stops during the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I thought I’d take a look at some of their celebrity cooks.

First up is Giada De Laurentis, a California-based personal chef and caterer and host of Everyday Italian. As the show title implies, De Laurentis specializes in casual Italian fare.

Pros:

• The flavor combinations of her recipes generally sound very appealing, and they run a nice gamut from hearty and comforting to light and refreshing.
• While none of her recipes demand complicated techniques, they don’t fall into the trap of the intuitively obvious, either. She generally offers interesting twists on familiar favorites.
• She favors fresh ingredients but isn’t intractable about their superiority. It makes her arguments in favor of them more persuasive because she resists the urge to make you feel like a terrible person for not having an herb garden in your back yard.

Cons:

• While her shows tend to focus on meal menus, her preparation sequence doesn’t always make sense. She’ll sometimes present meal components in the order in which they’re eaten as opposed to the order they’re most sensibly prepared.
• I will never understand the Italian fondness for the combination of chocolate and citrus, particularly orange. To my palate, it starts as an unpleasant aftertaste and goes downhill from there.
• She seems to be sliding into the Rachael Ray slot of “hopelessly overexposed Food Network ingénue.” In addition to Everyday Italian, she hosts Behind the Bash and has a new travel program on the horizon. Given that Ray’s career trajectory has led me to start hating Triscuits, I would rather Food Network put the brakes on the gathering Giada-thon.
• De Laurentis is an appealing, easygoing presence when she isn’t looking into the camera. When she does go eye-to-eye with it, she bares a terrifying, over-whitened pageant smile that is more menacing than endearing. It may well be genuine, but I find it disconcerting all the same.

Summary:

Of all of the Food Network chefs I follow, De Laurentis offers the largest number of recipes that I actually use. I like her flavor profiles and find the recipes to be clear and usable; they’re also flexible enough to allow for modification and experimentation. Her cuisine isn’t earth-shatteringly innovative, but it isn’t banal either. Just sheathe those choppers.